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Flooring gets heavy duty treatment

The ability to meet a very high specification and a proven installation track record were two of the principal factors that helped specialist flooring company Flowcrete Australia recently secure a challenging project from McMillan Printing, one of Australia’s largest printing firms.

McMillan had relocated to premises in Granville, Sydney, some three prior, into a building where the floor comprised a 20 mm magnesite screed topped with a self-smoothing epoxy resin. The floor was in reasonable condition with little or no delamination between the epoxy and magnesite. It had only been subject to pedestrian and light trolley traffic.

Prior to moving in, McMillan had applied a roll coat epoxy to the floor to change the colour, achieving better light reflectivity. Within a very short period, the floor began to degrade where heavy loads of up to one tonne were being transported on forklifts. The condition of the floor represented a significant safety risk, a problem that, if not rectified quickly, could have caused health and safety ‘stop-work’ orders.

With printing contracts from government departments and major corporations, the firm could not run the risk of any disruption to production. The decision was therefore made to replace the flooring in the aisleways with a more suitable heavy-duty system.

The client elected to go with Flowcrete’s proposed system, to be installed to a very high, heavy-duty specification. This involved removal of the magnesite back to concrete, followed by blasting and grinding to obtain a clean contaminant-free substrate. In order to rebuild the floor level, the client opted for Flowtex HT installed at 20-30mm, rather than a cementitious screed, to avoid further problems with the flooring in these high traffic areas. The Flowtex HT was sealed with a skim coat of SF41 clear scratch coat, followed by 2-3mm of Flowshield, a self-levelling epoxy resin system. In order to achieve maximum slip resistance, a roll coat layer of SF41 with orange peel effect was then applied.

The installation was carried out in four stages by Dynamic Flooring Australia, one of Flowcrete’s approved applicators in Australia, whose proven track record was a major contributing factor in the award of this project. Each work area was fully isolated to minimise dust and to prevent damage to the highly valuable printing equipment, allowing production to continue.